Lundy
by Ecatar
Summary: Frank Lundy is called to the aid of Alexander Peterson in Portland, Oregon following his bout with the Bay Harbor Butcher in Miami. On the cusp of retirement, Lundy takes on a protege of sorts, while searching for the Trinity Killer. But there's more than one serial killer on the way for both Lundy and Peterson, a killer with a dance.
1. Chapter 1

Portland's full of bike riders, taxi cabs and chain smokers peeling off layers of "new" fresh air and dancers like spirit walkers in the woods around. It's full of college guys and gals all a little too old or a little too pale; the ones riding bikes. But there are still people, beyond the laws of the Oregon bound seal and the Mormons and the drunken overflow of WSU that drive cars and eat burgers with chips and perpetually disappoint their fathers and mothers. These people love and lose, perhaps less fully than the standards set by the star crossed hipster nation of the area. But they still love. They are out of place, pieces to a totally separate game, but they still love.

People fuck, with regularity, and they eat and drink while going to bars. People murder, a trance state in the state for death. Doctors perform surgeries. Brooklyn's finest dressed in blue turns shades of green soaked in rain splashes, but there is still homicide and the need for a squeeze satisfied only but cuffs and chains. Darling, there is still death and cake and justice in Oregon.

There sits a man in a car with hands that drive and mind that wonders where it mind wander, past fumes of burning morning beans in a cup and the glazed sugar crystals on doughnut runs that stick to fingers, avalanche. No, his mind is the sticky residue between crystal and skin, stuck like glue, or paste.

His mind ticks, the eyes transfix, just past the road, wheels turning in sync, a machine driving machine like shoveling bread bits out of a bag, oh small bird. He doesn't remember how he got there, or here, nor does he care, an old soul they'd say, always fixed years back and days to the Oregon rain that dripped and dropped like beats or rays of sun, home to the before.

Back to before he met the man with no beard who cracked him open, puss and blood. Murderers, cases, coffee night places, all just over the road, his eyes could see it, a pace or flick out of reach.

That's life he thinks, marbles rolling forward down a pipe; the brain. He can't go back up the pipe, he can't swim up stream or turn back. Sometimes, he can't move forward. He's honey residue, stuck to the spoon, not sliding down a gullet or back in the jar.

He pulls into a parking lot, sounds shuffling, car smoking cigar, puff puff, into the air. It's wet outside, a damp cloth over the city, covering his window, cleaning it. Breathing is unchanged in the car.

The clicking from drive to park, 3 rotations of a socket, roll his eyes, back, head tilting into the cushion. His hand drops to his knee, scaling up and onto his stomach. Bone, he's bone sick, and they jut out like the edges of a church, the corners. He rubs them.

A child looks at a man while on a bike. He sees the man is asleep. He pedals to turn around.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexander's third floor apartment was absolutely heavy with the case files of the today, and remnants of yesterday.

There was a clear coffee table stained with the cream of paper folder, etched with recycled signs. Grave dirt sat at the top, forming the names of recent victims, like Carlotta, Scott and quite distinctly Max Kimble. There were various other folders flipped upside down, some tossed under the table, but all were easily discerned to have a great bit of water damage that made them smell just a bit off.

The legs of the table were iron, more like limbs of a bed frame complete with adjustable clips. They didn't appear to be made for a table, but they were in fact embedded in the glass of this table, and acted like a compartment in order to separate the files, that seemed to drip and puddle into other sections quite often. Two of the legs were crooked, however.

The floors were a dark shade of brown, and they melted on the tongue like cider from the apple farm an hour away from Alexander's house as a child. The floors grew darker in the rings that seemed to go on forever into one another, extending through every corner of the apartment.

The walls of the apartment were relatively plain by modern standards, and perhaps so even more fitting for the relatively young in the relatively lively city of Portland Oregon. They were a white that looked and felt like powdered doughnuts, complete with little bumps that could stick to clothing like hostess powder. They smelled like the Portland rain, and if peeled back, there would surely more brown wood paneling.

These walls led into a relatively small kitchen, more like a nook complete with a fridge too large in proportion to the rest of the space. It matched the white of walls, but it felt far more like a house than an apartment. There were cereal boxes that sat on top of the fridge, sticking out like a sore thumb. If they weren't there, Alexander wouldn't be there either. There was purple, and light blue, and a crisp yellow.

Directly across from the couch, past the leather couch that was actually just as white as the walls though it was black, was the bedroom. Alexander slept in a bed complete with a comforter like shades of Dino the dinosaur from the Flinstones. There was a black wood table that seemed destined to collapse under the weight of maxim magazines and fresh case files yet to be soiled by rain or coffee. There was also a cell phone that flickered on with a new message from Skylar. The screensaver in the background was a girl in running clothes on a cloudy but not rainy Portland day. The picture seemed worn, the crispness of the white edges that were beyond the confines of the phone were wilting.

Under his Dino the Dinosaur sheets, Alexander Peterson stirred, face pulling away from his pillow like melted white chocolate from a wrapper. His body, unpeeling from the sheets, left behind a warm outline, a whole other man, who to an untrained eye, looked like a warm childhood stain.

Getting out of bed, his body shivered, stepping out from a pool into the cold air of his apartment. His hair wasn't terribly long, nor was it absolutely long. Instead, it stayed in a perpetual state of the medium, longer brown locks like strips of beaten leather falling over the sides of his exceedingly brown eyes. His body was white, but unlike the paste hue of his neighbors, his skin was well traveled, foreign. He was in decent shape, without the full complement of bulging abdominal muscles or fully developed forearms muscles, but defined by clear biceps and tight pectorals. He was halfway between, an even 5'10 and about 175 pounds.

He half expected the smell of coffee, like a sickness now it seemed, to bleed through his apartment room. Instead, he smelled dampness, both of the outside Portland morning and all the previous ones he'd spent there.

There was never any room for another smell that pinned Alexander to his own apartment. He never cooked pasta or steaks there, nor did he have a pet as dictated by the laws of the lord overseer, Noble John of Westwood, Apartments. The only scent that traced Alexander, distinctly him that is, back to the apartment was trapped in the shower doors of his bathroom, just a few feet away. The smell of his shampoos and conditioners stuck to him like a locked wetsuit, drying and rewetting under the Portland rainy sky. They never dripped or soaked into the rest of the apartment, though. It stayed clean.

Alexander slid his feet across the wood of the floor so quickly that the smell of burning wood and the tenderness of an aching foot could be felt through the outer streets of Portland. His bathroom opened, a creaky coffin, and then slammed shut again. His phone continued to vibrate, with messages from DISPATCH, and a missed call emblem dashing across the molding Portland sky.

Alexander waltzed his way out of his apartment, only to turn around for his phone. He hadn't checked it at all in recognition of a morning ritual, a custom to forget it and come back for it. His eyes chuckled for his mouth, a dance when he flashed over Skylar's apologies and goodbyes as she headed out of the city for work. Steady meditation and drinking.

Dispatch was next, sending across an address that almost made Alexander slip down the glossy steps of his apartment building. He almost slipped on the steps quite often. They were damp from the activists against elevators who called them a consumerist trap. Alexander still used the steps though, because they were more engaging. You could slip on them. He figured that's why everyone used them.

He reached the bottom of the steps, and the same teenage feeling of a strong deodorant wiped several times over BO clogged his throat. He could still taste it on the long car ride dates of his youth. It smelt like an alpine car freshener. Car fresheners always made him sick.

He waved a quick goodbye at his doorman Pete, on the way out, smiling at sheen of his black slacks and the exceptional weathering of his leather belt. No one in Portland dressed like him, no one except Pete.

Alexander himself was wearing similar black slacks, tightened around the legs, trimmed one would say. His own leather belt was new, freshly bought at a Target before arriving in the Portland area. It refused to wilt, no matter how much he wore it. His shirt was white, buttoned almost all the way to the top, revealing a pristine white undershirt that smelled to the eyes like absolute plainness, like clothes should. The shirt covering this fine specimen of fruit of the loom glory was tightened around the shoulders and drawn to the back in order to maintain a trimmed appearance.

The door handle for his 99 black Corolla struggled to click open a great deal under the falling rain. He'd spilled a glass or orange juice, an exceptionally poignant one at that, while fumbling with his keys, and failed to clean the car door. It stuck like glue in between the inner handle and outer metal. After finally clicking open, the drops from the sky covered the protruding seatbelt buckle, slipping around in Alexander's hands, and the door closed, a light click as the belt sparked against its' own locking guard.


	3. Chapter 3

Alexander's boots felt soaked with the blood waiting for him, like a pool begging him to jump in past the entry way of the condo on SE Madison.

Blood had this way about it, alluring because of its openness. It refused buckets of bleach or window cleaner, invading hallways of hospitals. That's why people left, because they could smell that, underneath the layers of medical perfume, it was around them. It danced around them, and they couldn't hide from looking at it. It didn't matter how old or young a person was, the smell of blood was drawn to them.

Alexander felt united at these crime scenes, tied together with the rest of his life here in these walks up to the blood pools that told stories better than campfires because blood smelled the same at Portland condos, hotels in California, and hospital stays in Texas. He was ready to do the dance, because he'd been doing this dance for quite some time.

The condo's grass was saturated with water from the continuous rain, native to Portland alone it seemed like. So it was a deep green, not dark, but deep. It was exactly green, like any loving house should come with. Love seeped into the grass beyond the colors though; it was freshly trimmed.

The house was made of red brick, the lines between the bricks a sickly gray, but fitting with the apple color of its tennant. Those specific colors drew cops in with heavy hearts. Family colors.

There was white wood trimming around the door that opened up without a screen. There was a gold handle of course, but the door was already cracked open. It was how the smell got out. Alexander walked in back into the world. The Portland world.

"Hey man, you might one a mask for this one,"

Jordan Callegheri was Alexander's lieutenant, head of the homicide division at the Portland police department. When Alexander transferred over as the Sargent of the division, Jordan had taken a special interest in him. He was tall, fit, but most essentially, he felt like the city of Portland. He was natural, riding his bike, taking hikes, eating out of organically grown food shops with quinoa burgers. He kept his hair taken back in a ponytail and his cheek bones outlined the rest of his face. His eyes were green, large circlets that told stories in the rings, like the bark of an old tree. Not like the floor boards in Alexander's apartment.

"Nah, just tell me the story so I can get the fuck out of here and start working. What do we have so far?"

Alexander had to stay in the hallway leading into the house, because much of the front living room was soaked with blood. There'd been a few victims, brought together in this one room obviously. A family. Alexander refused to wear those goddamn safety shoes.

"Travis says we've got several victims here. Not like we didn't already know there. He thinks, given the amount of blood here, we've got about four possible vics at the least. The blood is pretty fresh too. Time of death could be anywhere from 10-15 hours. We'll have to get samples back to the lab for more clarification."

"Jordan, where are the fucking bodies?"

"Well, it looks like someone tried to bury them in the backyard. Bastard only got a few feet deep and then he stuffed them in there, one on top of the other."

"Family?

"Looks like they were the Petersons. Dennis, Vera, and Jonathon. I don't know who the fourth body is. For all we know there might be some more lying around here with this much fucking blood."

The Petersons. What a sick coincidence. It matched though. The bricks in the walls outside, the darker shades of cream on the walls inside, and the stains on the carpet from dog piss. It all screamed Peterson. The blood that seeped into the carpet now, seemed more like Peterson than all of that, though.

"Is the fourth body female?"

"Yes, looks like an African-American female in her early twenties. I'll go out on a limb and say she was Jonathon's girlfriend, but we haven't found any ID and their surrounding family isn't actually in the state of Oregon. All the way down in Texas, you believe that?"

No, he really didn't. He didn't believe that at all.

"Everyone's got a home I guess Lieutenant. I'm going to head out back for the bodies. Tell Travis to finish up here and come help with the bodies."

"I've actually got the interns back there already. They'll get you the cause of death."

"Fuck."

Alexander hated the interns. They dripped youth wherever they walked. Not youth like fresh milk either, no they didn't go down the throat easy. They weren't filling drinks. Their youth was like a coke, sometimes hard to drink with carbonation. Their spunk rotted teeth. Alexander had no problem rotting out his own teeth. But for those around him, the families of the blood, they didn't need soda pop.

Alexander turned to walk away, away from the blood sinking further and further away, the smell ever as strong though. He would wait for Jordan, he needed to get this right. It rained in front of him.

"A, wait. I think you should be at the station actually. I'll deal with the interns."

"What do you need Jordan?"

"I just figured I'd do something nice, you know?"

"Tell me."

"I need you to greet a guest of the department back at the station. I thought I could do it, but I figure I'm going to have to be here a while anyway, with this much blood. So it has to be you."

"You want me to ditch these murders for a guest?"

"He's here for the dancers A."

"Why?"

Jordan always dressed in a black suit for work. His shirts were always pressed, white, cut to the shape of his body. The shirts, the cuffs, the ties, they wanted to be worn by him. They kept in line. Today, they were cut in the same way, but there was something different. There was a piece of the shirt hanging over the collar of his belt, dead. It'd been left behind by the heard when it was carefully tucked in that morning. There was indeed another button poking out over the top of this same belt collar. Jordan really wanted to impress whoever was coming.

"I think you'll like him A. He's a serial killer hunter, a real big hot shot. Works for the FBI."

"Don't fuck with me Jordan. Is he going to be worth anything or not?"

"I don't know A. Regardless, be nice to him, okay? We might want to work with him later, and I don't want our department bent over by the FBI again."

"What's his name?"

"Frank Lundy. Remember that please. I'll fill you in and have a blood report sent over later okay? Just wait at the station, he said on the phone he'd be in straight from the plane."

"Just get me the cause of death. If I do this for you, you owe me one."

"Says the Sargent to his boss. He's flying in from Miami, so be a little understand, alright? Now get your ass to the station."

"Get me the COD Jordan."

Frank Lundy. Cheers for doughnuts.


	4. Chapter 4

The sticking and unsticking of the door felt more like a cracking open of the past few months of Alexander's life. Like the inside of a broken melon, juices began to flow out in the form of case files and murder scenes, the smell of blood covered in leotards and tap shoes, still seeping through, oh it was like poetry. Alexander absolutely hated the dancer killings because he always seemed ten steps behind. He didn't have any solid leads, no witnesses, no evidence to point in any general direction. The seduction of the dance wasn't leading him anywhere. And yet, it was. For as much as Alexander hated being led in absolutely no direction, the liveliness of the killings made his skin ache with envy. Not for the killing, of course.

The spilling out of Alexander's life seemed to turn to explosion in the sky. There were pockets of intense rainfall overwhelming the city now. There was no relief from the continuous down poor, an endless fall for Alexander without any leads or hope for the future. But he didn't want this Lundy here, because he didn't need any help. Lundy would invade him, right into his very bloodstream and he could feel it.  
Lundy would be a fucking itch. Under his skin, of course.

Miami seemed to flood into his mind next. All at once, the surrounding ocean came rushing into the Portland streets. Lundy from Miami, rock star from the FBI. Probably a stained tan, clinging to his skin, and a rotting self-confidence. He'd be absolutely no fucking use. Miami was what it was, a hot mix of sand and Cuban food, shot into a glass of homicide. The sand, the ocean, the food were all just a band aid to distract from all the death, and the gators in Florida. He had to admit, Lundy was from the land of lies that were pretty damn good. Maybe he could learn a thing or two about distraction.

His turn into the station parking lot felt like an act of gravity, the strength emitting from the station stronger than the aroma of blood that Alexander could scarcely admit to the outside world drew him into every crime scene. This sense of gravity was like a great weight, pulling him into a world he'd yet to know. The cracking that he'd felt earlier grew, his skull beginning to splinter, as every thought, every painful emotion or lack-there-of began to spew like hot fumes out of a cauldron towards the station. His very essence was being sucked out.

Pulling into his space felt like carrying a boulder up mount Olympus, and sweat started soaking the seat under him, a wet leather beginning to rub against his back, his own smell beginning to make his stomach churn, melted butter. This feeling was one of complete exhaustion, like some super natural force peeling back the layers of his skin. He felt like raw meat. He smelled like it too.

Alexander had feelings like this quite frequently sometimes. They came in bits and spurts with the changing of the seasons sometimes. Portland never truly changed, for him at least anyway. He was stuck in this season, and had been for quite some time. This season made his skin itch and burn. Regardless, he could get out of it with some coffee, in the office. He'd need to get home and shower too. After he sent this Lundy guy home anyway. It was starting to feel a little better already. The knotting of his intestines around his stomach like a hot coil was beginning to unwind. He felt he could walk.

The entrance to the police department was a heavy, clear glass double-door that felt like the perfect guard dog. It couldn't actually do much, but it felt entirely professional, like two more officers on the force.

The rest of the entry way was white tile, laced with black spots that made the room feel like a checkerboard. Every move felt important while walking, the entirety of the police force weighing down on a well-planned decision deciding the fate of the Earth, or at least the Portland area. The walls were blue, a lighter blue that left the picture frames up of apprehended suspects and the biggest cases in the Portland Cold Case Unit feeling sick and more like a doctor's office than a police station.

There was a security check point up ahead, easily bypassed by the most dangerous of offenders: the police officers that could simply scan a badge or flash some lightly sprinkled pink doughnuts to get through. The station began to feel more and more like a bad mob racket being run in the back of a barbershop every day, complete with the incompetent guards of the time who looked like they'd shaved backwards with a disposable razor.

Alexander flashed his badge, greeting his fellow employees as he passed through. His offices were just a right and down the hall. The space wasn't huge at all, and it was sorely lacking on the intimidation factor for criminals brought in for questioning. To see this massive building and be brought in solely on the ground floor made it feel to Alexander like he was simply having a mock arrest, like big brother was watching him from the security cameras above, and any second the real arrest would begin. Everything became anxious when he brought suspects in for questioning though.

His pores started to betray him again, every one of them disobeying his body's every command as they leaked all over his clothes. They began to rot out, and there was absolutely nothing he could do but let it happen.

The walk down the hall ended past the two plant centurions who guarded the homicide division with absolute rigidity. The office was completely empty, desks left untended to because of the huge emphasis Alexander has assumed was placed on the new case on SE Madison. There must have been a new discovery or two at the house. He was missing it for this.

The light of a monitor radiated from the dark behind a door to his left though. Alexander flashed back to the coldness of the room, the absolute chill that set in on the back of his neck while watching the crime scene videos that wandered in amazement over every angle of the dancer killings like a study of Bernini sculpture. Someone had stepped into his past in that room, he could feel a piece of himself sitting there, watching those tapes all over again, disgusted, but amazed with the complete attention to detail, the liveliness.

Alexander began to fume.

He opened the door not to the sea salt intoxication of the Miami beaches or the greasy feeling on the tongue while biting into Cuban food, but a burning smell of fruit from a tree. His eyes closed, tears poking out from the sting of citrus, and his teeth ached with the incoming wave of freshly peeled oranges, but his stomach felt fine. He felt good, like every womb was sewing itself shut, the bacteria being eaten. The hollowing out pieces of him stopped hollowing.

Sitting in a chair before him with his feet up, squinting in the dark wasn't the heralded rock star of Miami, but an older man, complete with a receding hairline and some kind of creamy sandwich. He didn't even sit with his feet up in a Miami way. He didn't look like a sailor with tanned legs and a sock line that contrasted with the blackness of leg hair. No, Alexander imagined this man's leg hair was a sickly white, or at least getting there. His black slacks covered his legs though, except for the grey socks that reminded him of his grandfather's socks, warm and covering his feet after a day at work. Alexander smelled jelly filled cookies and perfume mixed with intermittent involuntary bowl movements, and honey. He felt white counter tops cleaned rather lightly under his hand, specks of dust clinging to his skin. The man's hands laced together behind his head, holding him up for support, and Alexander felt the smooth, wrinkled skin of his grandfather's hands when he gave him hard candy to chew on, feeling the caramel taste eek down the back of his throat towards the pit where his stomach was supposed to be.

Alexander should have known the moment he heard the name Frank. It was covered in the taste of sweets and Ensure.


	5. Chapter 5

"Lunch worthy material, eh Alexander."

A conversation grew between the hairs on Alexander's neck and the tips of the stale tasting air in the room.

"Why don't you sit down for some lunch? It's a special occasion."

Alexander saw Lundy's eyes on the face of the monitor in front of them. Marbles stuck by gum, bending weak circlets.

"I've had lunch every day at one o'clock for quite some time you know. Traditions are important, don't you think?"

Lundy's face was turned towards Alexander. Celebrity was staring him right in the eye. His hands shook. He was embarrassed in front of the empty room behind them.

"I'll sit down for a little while."

There was a gathering of supernatural forces, pulling his skin off the bone toward a seat in front of him. The leather of the seat turned into a glue. He wondered if Lundy's seat was like glue. The hem of his slacks.

"Sitting is good. If you're good enough at it, it feels like a beach. A beach, all the time."

The glue of the seat turned into sand pebbles. The pebbles were sweating, but not scalding. There was coarseness between his toes.

"Miss Miami sir?"

"Not one bit. I miss everything about it, though."

There existed in the silence an understanding. The words Lundy said, Alexander digested them. Down his throat, into the rawness of his belly and broken down into pieces of one thought. He was thinking Lundy's thoughts.

"You're not from around here, are you partner."

"How do you gather?"

Lundy's eyes made him embarrassed that he asked the question.  
"You don't look like you're from Miami, either sir."

Alexander remembered the tang of orange juice when he was kid. Watered down citrus splashed around the pores on his tongue and his nose airs unstuck whenever he looked at Lundy.

"What do you think of cucumber sandwiches Alexander?"

"I love coffee."

"I hate coffee. I love the smell of it."

Alexander remembered the splashing of a mop on a hardwood floor from somewhere back in his childhood. Lundy's forehead shined. His hair was thin enough.

"Alexander, I think it's time you started telling me about this dancer guy. Let's go get your coffee. I hear there's coffee here."

"There's coffee everywhere Mr. Lundy."

"So you know where to find it?"

"I suppose so. Get your jacket, we'll take my car."

"Let's stop by the beach on the way there."


End file.
